When we’re weren’t presenting or evangelizing MIXTT, Diana and I had the privilege of getting a first glimpse and an inside look at some other awesome startups and the teams behind them. By far the greatest standout for me was Swype, a technology that lets you input text through a continuous “swiping” motion on a keyboard screen. It lets you easily write text at over 50 words per minute, compared to regular tapping or T9’s systems’ average of 20. One of the co-founders is the guy who invented T9 predictive text – it’s really neat to see an entrepreneur improving upon his own product (rather than continually insisting that it’s the best there is). If the competition were up to me, Swype would have won.

For its practicality I loved DropBox, which leverages cross-platform cloud storage to give you a headache-free, online back up all your essential files. It syncs conveniently and easily with your PC and enables you to share as well. Also of note in the practical category was GoPlanit. I’d honestly use this to figure what on earth to do when I land in a new city and only have two days to experience it. Hats off to those guys as well for coming up with a smart name. We’re still trying to come up with some catchy (AND not lewd) that MIXTT can stand for. Suggestions always welcome.

Causecast gets my vote for nice design and valuable content, Akoha for a pretty innovative and born-of-goodness idea, and BlahGirls for its entertainment value, and, admittedly, for being attached to Ashton Kutcher. Pretty cool for a TV celebrity to make a foray into the tech world, if you ask me.

The best aspect of TechCrunch50 was the cast of people who made it what it was: the TechCrunch staff – bloggers-turned-event-creators, passionate entrepreneurs, enthusiastic investors, and big-name industry celebs like Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Mark Cuban, Don Dodge, Robert Scoble, and Yossi Vardi, to name a few. I’m already excited to see who shows up next year.

Diana and I camped out in my living room for 6 hours today working on a video pitch. It’s harder than it looks! 35 takes and a hell of a lot of junk food later, here’s what we came out with. Clearly just a practice version. Later this week with a videographer on hand, we’ll try to get something more official going – sans the whirring of the MB Pro fan and hopefully, sans my questionable facial expressions.